


The Seventh Wave

by mrs_leary (julie)



Category: Merlin (TV) RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-24
Updated: 2012-09-24
Packaged: 2017-11-14 23:44:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/520754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/julie/pseuds/mrs_leary
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Colin and Bradley finally had sex after the fifth season wrap party, thinking that was goodbye. So what do they do now there's a sixth season…?</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Seventh Wave

**Author's Note:**

> A fill for my **[cottoncandy-bingo](http://cottoncandy-bingo.dreamwidth.org/)** card: 'Running out of time'. Though I have to say I don't seem to be addressing the prompts very directly.

♦

‘Well, this is awkward,’ said Bradley.

Colin glowered at him from where he sat hunched over, hackles well and truly up. ‘You don’t say.’ 

They had survived the first day of read–throughs for the sixth season – mainly by ensuring they were never left alone together, despite everyone apparently getting it into their heads that Bradley and Colin needed to bond. They had survived, but it hadn’t been easy, so it was with a sense of inevitable defeat that the two of them – happening to fall into step together on their way out of the London offices – wordlessly headed to the nearest pub, ordered two pints, and found a secluded table in a stultifying corner that probably hadn’t known light or fresh air since the Victorian era.

Bradley commented, ‘I honestly wouldn’t have, if I’d thought there’d be a sixth season.’

‘ _Thank_ you, Captain Obvious.’ That had been the whole point, after all. Suddenly they’d been running out of time, so they’d seized their last chance, their one and only chance, to finally scratch an itch they’d been trying to ignore for five years. The night of the wrap party – and well on into the morning after – had been one hell of a ride. And then they’d said goodbye. 

Until that morning when they’d had to say hello again. The eight months of work ahead of them loomed long and dark.

‘So, what do we do now…?’ Bradley asked.

‘Well,’ said Colin, trying not to sound as if he were forcing the words through gritted teeth, ‘we could go back to ignoring it all.’

‘How are we meant to do that?’

‘We could start by _not_ talking about it.’

Bradley looked across at Colin with those guileless blue eyes. The man was sitting there as if innocent of the fact that he had those strong shapely shoulders, which were shown off to perfection by him leaning back in the chair with his arms crossed. A sceptical frown wrinkled the skin above that magnificent nose. ‘And how’s that been working for you?’ Bradley asked.

Colin’s glower turned up a notch. ‘Works fine for me. Trouble is, it takes two.’

‘Yeah,’ Bradley returned, ‘so let’s assume I’m not playing along with that one. What’s Plan B?’

Colin shrugged, his shoulders stiff. ‘Fucked if I know.’ 

This was what he got for breaking one of his cardinal rules, of course. He was perfectly happy to sleep with his colleagues – as long as they were as good at compartmentalising as Colin himself was. It was stupid of him to have ever made an exception for Bradley James, no matter how very tempting it had been to finally surrender to that seventh wave of lust.

The problem was that their one encounter hadn’t, after all, calmed the itch but only seemed to have aggravated it. ‘It’s no use –’ Colin found himself saying. He flushed in anger at his own lack of control. 

‘What’s no use?’

‘It’s no use trying again. Is it.’

Bradley just shook his head once, in a firm gesture that nevertheless contained a hint of ambivalence. No.

‘Get it out of our systems,’ Colin continued, weakly.

Bradley rolled his eyes, and considered him mercilessly. ‘It’s not that sort of thing,’ he said. ‘Is it.’

‘Should be. What’s the big deal? So we both l–’

_‘Don’t,’_ said Bradley, cutting him off. ‘Not like this.’

‘Don’t what?’

‘Use the L word.’

Colin stared at him in astonishment. ‘What are you even talking about? I wasn’t going to –’

Bradley narrowed his eyes threateningly.

‘– call us lesbians or anything.’

‘Right…’

‘I was just gonna say, we both _lust_ for it, that’s all.’ Colin shrugged irritably. ‘What’s the problem with calling it what it is?’

‘That’s not what you’re doing, though.’

‘Oh, it’s not…?’ Colin retorted sarcastically. ‘I’m giving it its due, James. Lust is a big word, to me. You and me: it’s not just a fancy. It’s not just a… a whim. Not just random, and not just for a moment, either.’

‘Oh, I know!’

‘What would _you_ call it, then?’

Bradley’s cheeks blotched red, and he looked somewhere else, his arms tightening across his chest. Eventually he choked out, ‘Never mind.’

‘What –’

‘Leave it be!’

‘– d’you think we _like_ each other, then?’

Another roll of his eyes. ‘Of course we do, you great…’ Bradley was visibly searching for just the right insult. ‘You ruddy great… _pillock_ , Morgan.’

Colin just looked at the man. Despite himself, a guffaw escaped him. ‘Pillock…?’ he echoed.

Bradley’s annoyed facade was already cracking apart, and a reluctant smile was beginning to escape him.

‘Is that the best you can do?’

‘That’s just the start.’

‘Go on, then. I dare you!’

Bradley was kind of ruefully grinning by now. His arms loosened enough that his hands lay in his lap, though he didn’t lean in any closer. ‘Better not risk it,’ he advised.

‘Think I’m scared of you, do you?’

‘Oh yes, my friend,’ Bradley said in a tone so direct and easy that it was deadly. ‘Because that’s not the L word I was thinking of.’

Not _lust_ … Not _like_ … ‘Not lesbians…?’

Bradley shook his head. No.

Something rose and expanded within Colin’s chest like a bubble full of freedom. It was the scariest thing ever. If it burst, he wouldn’t be able to breathe.

Bradley just waited, watching him, his eyes sharp.

Colin hardly dared even take a sniff of air, let alone the great gasping gulp of air he so desperately needed. He just watched, waiting on his doom.

Bradley sat forward at last, his gaze softening just a little. One hand spread on the dark stained wood near where Colin’s beer sat ignored, and Bradley leaned in close enough to lean on the table with his other forearm a bar across his chest. A wry sad smile quirked one corner of Bradley’s mouth. He eventually asked, ‘I have to be the one to say it, do I?’

Colin nodded mutely.

‘ _Love_ , you idiot,’ Bradley said. ‘Don’t you know _love_ when you feel it?’

And all the resentment and tension and resistance that Colin had carried across his shoulders and his back whenever he thought of Bradley – all of that just fell away, like a heavy cloak slipping down off him and crumbling to nothing – and he could breathe, he could _breathe_ , he _could_ – and the air was light and crisp and oxygenated, it went right to his head as that seventh wave of love crashed through him.

‘So,’ said Colin, happily, ‘what do we do now…?’

Bradley rolled his eyes again, though fondly this time. ‘We find the nearest private location, and you try to make all this up to me with a kiss.’

‘Lot to make up for…’

‘I am aware of it,’ Bradley noted loftily.

Colin admitted, ‘As Plan Bs go, that’s a pretty damned good one.’

‘Then let’s get out of here.’ Bradley stood from the table and led the way out into the clear soft air of a perfect spring evening.

Colin followed, ninety percent penitent and ten percent exuberant. Or maybe it was the other way around.

♦


End file.
